Ludmila Ulitskaya © photo private
Ludmila Ulitskaya [Russia]
Ludmila Ulitskaya was born in 1943 in Dawlekanovo, Bashkiria, where her family had been evacuated during the Second World War. She grew up in Moscow. After studying biology, she worked as a geneticist at the Institute of General Genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1967. She was dismissed in 1970 for disseminating samizdat literature and worked for two years at the Jewish Chamber Music Theatre as a literary advisor. Eventually she became a freelance writer and publicist. Her first publication, the long story “Сонечка” (1992; “Sonechka”, 2005), appeared in the literary magazine Novyj mir. In 1994, the book was awarded the best translated book of the year in France and earned the author the French Medici Prize. Here, as in her subsequent stories and novels, she portrays people and their everyday lives in the Soviet Union, whose life lines are intensely intertwined. Her strong emotions are contrasted with the adversities of everyday life. Stylistically, she brings together Russian and Jewish narrative traditions and raises them to a contemporary level. Her novel “Даниэль Штайн, переводчик” (2006; “Daniel Stein, Interpreter”, 2011) is based on the life story of a Jewish Catholic who was able to save many of his co-religionists through his informational advantage as an interpreter for the Belarusian allied with the Nazis. He later converted to Catholicism and eventually went to Israel, where as a monk he founded a community modelled on the early Christians. His death in 1998 was probably an assassination disguised as a traffic accident. The large-scale social panorama “Зелёный шатёр” (2011; “The Big Green Tent”, 2011) tells of three friends who become dissidents in the Soviet Union. “Лестница Якова” (2015; “Jacob’s Ladder”, 2019) is also a panoramic account of Russian society in the 20th century, this time through the story of a branching family. “Uncompromisingly, Ulitzkaja shows what the Soviet system made of people who were too weak to resist it … The novel is Ulitzkaja’s most personal book.” (“Süddeutsche Zeitung”) Her most recent publication is “Бумажный театр: непроза” (tr. Paper Theatre. No-Prose), a collection of screenplays, diary entries, memoirs and plays.
Lyudmila Ulitskaya also openly advocated her political positions. Thus, she not only criticised Vladimir Putin’s policies, but in March 2014, together with other academics and cultural figures, voiced her rejection of the Russian authorities’ policies in Crimea.
Her books have been translated into more than 33 languages. She has received many awards for her work, including the Alexandr Men Prize for intercultural mediation between Russia and Germany in 2008, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2014 and the Siegfried Lenz Prize in 2020.
The author lives and works in Moscow.
Bibliography
Сонечка
Новый мир, 1992
Бедные родственники
СЛОВО/SLOVO
Moscow, 1993
Медея и её дети
Новый Мир, № 3 и 4, 1996
Весёлые похороны
Вагриус
Moscow, 1997
Казус Кукоцкого
Новый мир, № 8 и 9, 2000
Девочки
Эксмо
Moscow, 2002
Сквозная линия
Эксмо
Moscow, 2002
Искренне ваш Шурик
Время
Moscow, 2003
Люди нашего царя
Эксмо
Moscow, 2005
Даниэль Штайн, переводчик
Эксмо
Moscow, 2006
Русское варенье и другое
Эксмо
Moscow, 2008
Зелёный шатёр
Эксмо
Moscow, 2011
Священный мусор
АСТ
Moscow, 2012
Детство 45-53. А завтра будет счастье
АСТ
Moscow, 2013
Лестница Якова
АСТ
Moscow, 2015
Дар нерукотворный
АСТ
Moscow, 2016
О теле души
Лекторий Прямая Речь
Moscow, 2019
Бумажный театр: непроза
АСТ
Moscow, 2020
ENGLISH
Sonechka
Schocken
[Translation Arch Tait]
New York, 2005
Medea and Her Children
Schocken
[Translation Arch Tait]
New York, 1996
The Funeral Party
Schocken
[Translation Arch Tait]
New York, 1997
The Kukotsky Enigma
Northwestern University Press
[Translation Diane Nemec Ignashev]
Evanston, 2016
Daniel Stein, Interpreter
Overlook Press
[Translation Arch Tait]
New York, 2011
The Big Green Tent
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
[Translation Bela Shayevich]
New York, 2011
Jacob’s Ladder
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
[Translation Polly Gannon]
New York, 2019